Lilian Moller Gilbreth(1978-1972) & Frank Bunker Gilbreth(1868-1924)

Lillian Moller Gilbreth

was the industrial & organizational psychologist who was also working as a first woman engineer holding a PhD. Lillian and Frank were true partners from the beginning. Her husband Frank B. Gilbreth was a businessman and Lillian was a industrial psychologist. This enabled the couple work in harmony, and made big successes in workplace. They both became passionate about finding the "one best way" to perform any task in order to increase efficiency and productivity in industry. For Frank Gilbreth, efficiency is the most basic thing in the workplace. He was not an educated person whereas he was passionate about doing his job in best way, and even in his work time he was thinking about how to improve quality of the work he was doing. He had a constructor company an he was asking both himself and the people around him to develop efficiency of labors. As a result of his thoughts and experiments he could improve the effectiveness of a worker 200% than before. Moreover, in this case, the workers were not doing much hard work or not working for much time. In deed, they were doing their job in the most effective way and in the most effective conditions. Mr. Gilbreth for years has closely wached workers at tasks of all kinds; he has discovered how much they lose by maving unprofitably hither and thither, by neglecting to take the shortest and easiest paths.

F.B.Gilbreth also worked on many scientific management issues such as:

Field System, Concrete System, Bricklaying System, Motion Study, Primer of Scientific Management, The Psychology of Management (with his wife Lillian Gilbreth), and Fatigue Study.

Gilbreth’s studies on industrial engineering mostly affected from Taylor’s ideas. However, Taylor’s studies mostly focused on mechanical systems and mechanical workshops, whereas Gilbreth’s main study areas were building, medicine, education, defence sectors in all of which there was a human factor. In this case, psychologist Mrs. Gilbreth helped his husband in many case.

After F.Gilbreth’s dead Hİs wife Moller Gilbreth tried to continue his husbands jobs, but she could not be so successful. On the other hand, she was one of the consultants of presidents Kennedy, Eishenhower, Roosevelt and Hover.

In 1946 their children Frank Jr. Gilbreth and Ernestie Gilbreth wrote a book "Cheaper by the Dozen" explaining the family life of the family.